This followed the resignation of Peter Lamb, who had been due to stand as a Conservative candidate in May’s local elections for Harlow Borough Council.

Mr Lamb had made several anti-Muslim posts on Twitter and had become the focus of demands by the party’s former chairman Baroness Warsi (herself Muslim) for an internal inquiry into the extent of Tory ‘Islamophobia’.

Peter Lamb has quit as a Tory council candidate following controversy over his anti-Muslim posts on Twitter

Many of the comments by purported Tory activists are remarkably stupid, but it does look as though Prime Minister Theresa May has seized on this mini-scandal in an effort to contrast her party with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, where Jewish activists claim there has been a reluctance to deal with ‘anti-semitism’.

However like many such unprincipled gestures, it risks tainting the Tories among potential UKIPish, ‘BNP-lite’ voters, while failing to gain them much on the other side, because most committed liberal, obsessive ‘antiracists’ wouldn’t vote Tory at present in any case – unless they are Jews on the liberal left who prioritise defeating Corbyn, in which case they probably don’t care about Islamophobia…

Prof. Rob Ford of Manchester University (co-author of a book about the rise of UKIP) has posted interesting comments about the Tories’ dilemma over multiculturalism. (see series of tweets below)

Many H&D readers will think Prof Ford is too obsessed by the supposed need to modernise the Tories long-term in order to capture liberal/non-white votes. An equally plausible route to power would be to appeal to White social conservatives.

At present one big problem is that many of these, while potentially agreeing with a conservative agenda on immigration and other social issues, profoundly disagree with the Tory (and for that matter UKIP) policies on economic austerity, privatisation of former nationalised industries such as rail and the Post Office, and the worship of the ‘free’ market.